who would leave his job to start a new business in that environment? okay. retail sales weren't that bad. but they nose dived right at the end of the quarter. retailers were afraid to restock inventory, figuring that spending would drop off the cliff right along with the nation's finances. it was all in all a very bad time for our nation. now, overlay the storm of the century for the northeast, one that shut down the wealthiest area of the country for several weeks and caused what ultimately may be $100 billion in damage. you had the physical shutdown from the storm neatly and miserably dovetailing with the mental shutdown caused by washington. the result, the abysmal and artificially reduced gross domestic product number we saw today. most money managers are fixated on that top-down analysis. they look at those numbers, they care, they correctly detected the cessation the business in this country was undergoing. they pulled in their horns because of it. some cases, dramatically. i understood it. say we came in to 2013 over the fiscal cliff. i would say the